News & Commentary

We asked candidates running for State Representative in House Districts 115, 113, 104, and 47 about their positions on 13 key pieces of legislation affecting civil rights and civil liberties in our state. We then studied the results to determine which candidates were supportive of ACLU of Texas priorities. The scores below reflect how current state lawmakers voted during the 2017 legislative session. For challengers, the scores indicate how they would have voted, as indicated in their responses to our candidate questionnaire. Here are the bills we analyzed in each section. Click the header to find out more about each category:

In South Texas, Rosa Maria and Jane Doe face the cruel realities of the administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

After Jane Doe, a 17-year-old immigrant from Central America, found out she was pregnant last month, she decided to have an abortion. But the Office of Refugee Resettlement — the federal government agency charged with caring for unaccompanied immigrant minors once they enter the country — is prohibiting her from getting one.

The doctor-patient relationship is the cornerstone of medical practice, and the foundation of that relationship is trust. Doctors have the privilege of helping people through some of the most important and challenging moments of their lives. We earn patients’ trust by giving them our best medical judgment based on science. That’s why I became a doctor.

Walking into the UNT Law School conference room for the ACLU of Texas’s first Reproductive Freedom in Action conference, I was excited and almost in disbelief that such an event was taking place in my home city. And when I moved back to Dallas two years ago to start at UTSouthwestern Medical School, I certainly would never have dreamed that I would be involved in the conceptualization and organization of such an event.